On Its Way Out, Young Justice Does Right By Its Diverse Cast

By Arturo R. García

Aqualad stands at the ready in “Young Justice.”

With just a few days until the series end, we come not only to prepare to bury Young Justice, but to praise this series and its creative team for not just engineering one of the best seasons by an animated series–perhaps one of the top five ever–but for doing so while making full, honest use of a cast of characters that got only more diverse as the series went on.

Spoilers under the cut

The show re-branded itself this season as Young Justice: Invasion, a nod to a renewed focus with more serialized elements and an older, tougher cast, with the show picking up five years after the end of the first season. This past week’s episode, “Summit,” brought to a head several of this year’s plot points, as the alliance between supervillain cabal The Light and the extraterrestrial invaders known as The Reach dissolved. But what elevated the episode from competent to cheer-worthy for me was its refutation of the idea of Aqualad as a second-tier character.

It’s in this episode that Aqualad not only tells his father, Black Manta, that he’s been working undercover on behalf of the YJ team alongside Artemis, but he bests Manta in individual combat despite his own conflicted feelings, which he readily admits to, ending the fight by coolly telling his father, “I believe that was fairly ruthless. I hope it made you proud.” No backup. No distractions. It’s Kaldur’s moment and the showrunners give it to him entirely. Even better, Kaldur is handed leadership of the team voluntarily by Nightwing (who himself came a long way from Season One, where viewers were told the team was “his.”)

On top of that, showrunners Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti should also get credit for giving enough screentime to these characters and their stories:

Bumblebee (l) and Guardian saw their relationship survive this year on Young Justice: Invasion.

Bumblebee and Guardian: These two characters grew not only into full members of the team, but managed to forge their own identities–superheroic and otherwise–as well as their relationship, despite almost losing touch with each other. Bumblebee emerged as a science-minded protege of The Atom, while her boyfriend stepped into the Guardian identity to fool the marauding Despero long enough to allow the team to subdue him. Best of all, neither of them was written to play the “bad apple” in the relationship; they were given the chance to work through their issues–and enough characterization for it to ring true.

Blue Beetle found himself under the influence of the villainous Reach before being freed.

Page 1 of 2 | Next page